


The Girl in The Window

by Fruitjack (Qlippoth)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 08:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14132484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qlippoth/pseuds/Fruitjack
Summary: A crew of ghost hunters investigate a warehouse in Denver, Colorado. The warehouse is said to be haunted by 'The Girl in The Window' - the ghost of a pregnant teenage girl who killed themselves during the Great Depression. But who was the father? And what was the connection to WWI, the NAZIs and ancient evils beyond time and space?





	The Girl in The Window

**Author's Note:**

> This story will be taken down April 15; it will be published in my 2nd anthology by the end of the year.
> 
> You'll notice that ordinals like 1st, 2nd, etc are written as 1irst, 2econd, etc - this is a style that I adopted for my 2nd anthology stories.

The adventure embarked at midnight.

The _Crew_ ‑ Lex, twins Jason  & Paul, and _I_ ‑ assembled at the cross of _Mississippi_ & _Federal_. Our spring's semester concluded and we advanced yet another year. We opted to celebrate that success by immersing into a haunt of equal parts mystic and tragic.

The site we zeroed onto wasn't vacant ‑ a reality that complicated _everything_. We faced _real_ not _imagined_ risks of capture. Our approach had to be the opposite of what years of travels throughout Colorado ghost towns and ghost mines taught us. We rejected as impractical the luxury of taking internet or equipment into the hotzone. We kept the investigation and its particulars away from our channel's fans. To spur hits, we planned to drop hints, then, to reveal evidence at a date past statute. To deter enmity, from either in or out of the community, the episode would be formatted as _audio_ not _video_.

Lex, our apt _journalist_ & _Jersey_ transplant, reconnoitered a site ‑ a site that abutted corners of Denver not friendly to outsiders. _Little Berlin_ , as it used to be called, sprawled over a five square mile area. Roughened by its stormy gentrification, its eerie folklore, it simply wasn't a place to seek diversion. So it wasn't a surprise to learn of a haunt buried amongst its tenements ‑ only at how _far_ and how _deep_ its connections permeated the occult.

Our target, the warehouse ‑ formerly the _Lux Haus Autos_ warehouse ‑ boasted of a complex and weird history. Constructed _c_. 1919, ostensibly to store surplus, the facility exchanged ownership every so many years 'til captured by that stated _foreign_ company. Between wars it thrived as a go‑to _Ford_ supplier. At the apex of the depression it swelled, occupied by employees, workers who claimed years of backpay.

Of its squatters, there was a girl, a girl named _Vilma Carolina_ , aged sixteen, and ‑ to junkies of this art ‑ heretofore known as _The Girl in The Window_.

We pressed into midnight awake and alert as if it were noonday. Our excitement stoked at the promise of the haunt. Electricity pervaded the air as though, _as though_ by wizardry we strayed into realms of vast, cool _if ambiguous_ sentience. Or was it that this our trespass‑to‑be amplified the malevolence of the city we trampled? Its hostility stirred premonitions of calamity, _of doom_ that may or may not _yet_ await us.

As we strolled through _Zuni_ , we crossed a walker's sights. We swore they were typical of that confused, bewildered tribe of walkers ‑ except ‑ they were elder to a degree not often encountered at the street. That figure eyed then footed at us as we hiked block after block of urban sprawl. Who or what they might have been, in spite of everything, they kept a steady, calm pace adrift to ours as if to mask their advance.

We weighed options to either admit or deny their entry to our _Crew_ ‑ then ‑ we thought better of it. We sped. _They sped._ The walker proved wise not only to the neighborhood's layout but to the trajectory toward the warehouse. That they fathomed our route so perfectly unsettled us beyond anything our imagination produced. Did they know of us? _How_ did they know of us? _Our plot_.... Why wasn't it easy to fox that interloper?

Crossing _6ixth_ & _Sheridan_ , we startled into a panic, a blaze of fear. The walker shouted to us. My hair stood as I tasted their ire, their warning perhaps threatening that we ought not to go further. _Run! Run! Run! Fools, you still gotta chance!_ ‑ and other, eerie ravings colored by a battered, crazed accent prompted us to escape that site.

Was _The Girl in The Window_ still a draw?

 _Vilma Carolina_ was the daughter of veterans who served (and died) during the First World War. Her father ( _allegedly_ ) was a Frenchman named _Auguste d'Carolina_ ‑ he died at _Somme_. Her mother ( _allegedly_ ) was an American named _Lementine_ (nee _West_ ) ‑ by affluence and by happenstance entangled betwixt love and war.

If we accepted dates as reported, as per calculations and suppositions, Lementine should have been six weeks pregnant after Germany captured her and took her into Bavaria _c_. July of 1916. Then, _Christmas Day_ , 1916, they released her as part of a swap. Later, discharged from the academy and from the country, she birthed _Vilma Carolina_ immediately upon reaching New York City, _c_. January of 1917.

For the next decade Lementine's and Vilma's whereabouts remained unknown. It was at the eve of the depression that they reappeared. The daughter enrolled as a 5ifth‑grader at the _St. Louis IX Academy_. The mother labored as a dispatcher at the _Lux Haus Autos_ warehouse.

A _Chronicle_ essay that Lex fetched revealed the academy expelled _Vilma Carolina_ for _pregnancy_ _c_. 1933. The father wasn't named. No attempt was made to identify the guilty, if the guilty they were, save that they were among the warehouse's transients ‑ _allegedly_. Then.... At midnight, sixteen years old and thirty weeks pregnant, she retreated to the _girl's room_ , _said her prayers_ ‑ to quote a witness ‑ and jumped out of the 3hird floor window.

That article's imagery was atypically even grotesquely _raw_. The editor's bent waxed explicitly where they inserted a black  & white photograph. Tinted red by age, the photograph exposed the macabre visage: two men stood at the upper, right window; _Vilma Carolina_ lay tarped at the street. The image's expression wasn't coy about its subject ‑ yet ‑ it struck us as strange that the tarp's contour failed to convey the victim's development.

Decades after the suicide ‑ as documented many, _many_ times over ‑ when the night's quiet and still, she returns. _The Girl in The Window_ returns. She's a shape, less a figure, more a suggestion. Frequent details include: running and shouting apparitions viscerally _felt_ as much as _heard_ , echoes of voices (of words like _get me out of this_ , or, _I'm burning burning burning_ ), even, fires' crackles ‑ alarms were tripped by the effect.

In addition to that reportage were signs common to _abductions_ ‑ delirium, hysteria, _fear_ of ordinary, everyday objects, and lost / jumbled time  & space. Compiled into Lex's dossier were tales that originated after the suicide and continued into the '30s and the '40s. Witnesses related their hearing cries, _cries like a baby's_ or their feeling impressions _of something_ , of something they couldn't identify, prowl the street where _Vilma Carolina_ died.

Let it be noted that _c_. 1967 a man's body had been removed from the _girl's room_ after a fire. The fire's cause wasn't understood but its damage was said to be extensive. The issue of the man's identity defied the police's effort. Straight into the midnight of our investigation its mystery persisted, filed as case  19B78C at the _John/Jane Doe National Database_.

By the end of the '60s, the warehouse hosted a sequence of mystics eager to sell a theory. Put to the test, however, all of them ‑ who or what ever they purported to be ‑ were set adrift. After Thadius A. Stevenson's expedition, as an act of desperation, the ownership _sealed_ the whole, entire 3hird floor.

Sites to match the warehouse's reputation served as beacons, drawing and claiming those sensitive to the paranormal. Often, they are not well adjusted folk. We should have expected interlopers. We should have expected and acted accordingly. We failed and that fate impelled us to play it by ear.

As such we randomized our course ‑ and got lost.

Jason & Paul ‑ our twins and resident ‑ _ists_ (geo  & bio) ‑ admitted they were stumped. _We oughtn't be lost_ , they insisted, _the streets are the streets_. Then they confessed of the eccentricity of the environment. _It's out of kilter._

We got lost yet that realization of our stray came from elsewhere. Not from the streets ‑ the streets _were_ the streets. Not from with‑out but from with‑in. Unspoken parts of our brains had been triggered and their power to suggest alarmed us. Perhaps we veered into a whirl of _madness_? ‑ a _disturbance_ ethereal and gossamer! As we tread into _Little Berlin_ , further and further aloft of the greater city of Denver, unaware of that progress due to the walker sparking the scatter, it felt as if our chemistry _tipped_.

By itself the effect might have been dismissed as nerves. Except the effect wasn't by itself, _alone_. There was the warehouse. There was the neighborhood. There was the walker. Taken _together_ , the paradoxes we faced jolted us into a shared, frayed experience.

In spite of midnight, the sky was brighter, the moon was fuller and larger than any of us recalled.

Then to our surprise the _Lux Haus Autos_ loomed into view.

Above ground it sported three levels of windows. Below ground it revealed a cellar. At its front we noted how its doors were gated by roll‑down / pull‑down metal. Its sides were alleys enshadowed by its neighbors. Everywhere we gazed, its solid, real brick cladding conveyed a stern, European facade, typical of early 20th century design, incompatible to the taste of the gentrified.

We assumed the site had been converted into a tenancy ‑ else ‑ into a storefront. That _reclamation_ failed to consume it felt welcome if odd. The glare of its gates matched the weathered, shattered pavement that encased its perimeter. The rough, brittle texture that gilded its masonry amplified the scowl of its grime. The establishment retained its industry's scars.

The _Crew_ struggled to find a signal. Our mobiles linked to _satellites_ not to _towers_. Given that midnight's wide open sky we grumbled, confused at the predicament. So it was peer‑to‑peer for us as a compromise although that drained batteries.

Relegated to watch‑duty ‑ always ‑ I kept my eyes and ears alert even as that whole, entire street splayed its emptiness. To our front and sides there was nothing, nothing ‑ _save_ a jagged grimace composed of warehouses by warehouses ‑ their lights, their lights _extinguished_.

I sat at the curb to journal. Lex and the twins hustled to get their voices into their sets. We prodded the case: how it wove in and out of that era's events. I plunged, again, into my summation of Thadius A. Stevenson's 1974 report.

 _Vilma Carolina_ , _The Girl in The Window_ , was sixteen years old and thirty weeks pregnant when she jumped to death. On paper her father was a French soldier and her mother was an American nurse. It was in Paris, _c_. 1913, that her mother met her father among classmates. Promptly, they turned into fiances. Lementine and Auguste planned to marry then the war broke and wrecked the pair. To stay together, they volunteered their services to the effort.

Auguste was struck at the _Somme_. Lementine was captured then taken into Bavaria. The postscript of their doom was the release Christmas Day, 1916, thirty weeks into term.

Lementine _changed_. She didn't speak of Auguste. She didn't recognize her colleagues or understand her duties. Students noted the extent to which her disposition altered. Especially how her manners assumed more Continental, less American characters. They wondered how she spoke French free of accent. _Rumors_ circulated at the academy. Professionals ‑ stressed by the calamity of the _Somme_ ‑ presumed the alteration was spurred by widowhood (although evidence of marriage had not been presented).

Amongst reporters the matter of her catch & release became fodder for gossip. They poked at the fringe of the mystery and their newsprint speculated a timeline. They concluded:

It started like any day started ‑ like any early, late‑July morning at an allied field hospital. A unit north of Geneva telegraphed their request for assistance. That alerted the staff to rouse the team: _she_ and a pair of British nurses joined to a surgeon. They, the medics, got crammed into an ambulance manned by a trio of drivers. That trio wasn't known to the staff and spoke a dialect _vaguely_ familiar to the surgeon _not_ to the nurses. The drivers opted for a shortcut through a pass; the staff wasn't comfortable yet acquiesced to experience. Then ‑ just as the sun cracked the sky ‑ the ambulance raced into the front, never to be seen or heard again.

Except _Lementine_ , its survivor, and she refused to clarify how they had been captured.

Weeks after her release then her discharge Lementine returned to New York City where she birthed _Vilma Carolina_. Records of the era weren't available to conclude whether or not she contacted her wealthy, Bostonian family. Ostracism? Howsoever she got by, she traveled the interior of the US throughout the '20s. Wheresoever she stopped, though, she worked for a variety of German international firms ‑ _engineering_ firms ‑ contracted by _Ford_. As such she floated about circles that catered to men later identified as exiled German mystics connected to the _Thules_ and to Ludwig Straniak ‑ a magician  & rival to Alistair Cooke.

Note that after her daughter's suicide, Lementine relocated to Germany. Her last known address, to where she forwarded French and American veteran correspondences, amounted to a Bavarian post office box. Her last known picture ‑ a snapshot labeled _Baghdad / 1937_ ‑ surfaced _c_. 1957 among the archives of a deceased _Thules_ prophet. Stevenson _et al_ assumed she survived the Second World War.

We were sober as we make it a point to be. While on‑duty we cannot predict what, if anything, may or may not be unleashed at an investigation. As we sat and spoke of the case into our recorders, I felt the onset of a disquiet that my recitation only served to heighten. I felt that we got lost. Lost not in _space_ but in _time_. We encroached into mysteries ‑ ancient yet tangible ‑ so unlike rustic ghostly legends and indifferent to physical and mental hazard.

It was as I contemplated everything that I _noticed_. I waited. Was it a trick? ‑ a mischief of light and shadow? I waited ‑ to give the situation the chance to settle. If, _if_ it weren't the truth, my persistence ought to debunk the impression. I wanted to dismiss it as the excess of the imagination. As if, to stifle that agony we tumbled into, we wished to see anything to jump‑start the heart. Try as I may, I couldn't stifle that shock I felt coming like a wave cresting suddenly, unexpectedly.

The _Crew_ spotted my stir.

 _Look!_ I pointed to the warehouse ‑ to its upper, right window.

A figure that didn't exist only a few breaths ago _appeared_. A figure shaped and featured like _a_ girl ‑ so we agreed ‑ gazed at us as we gazed at it. _That_ girl ‑ she watched us ‑ we couldn't believe it. We shuddered, petrified as we gawked at each other ‑ but we wanted to see it? ‑ and see it we did ‑ _the_ girl....

 _Vilma!_ we shouted ‑ the twins added, as they were oft to: _don't jump_.

Lex stole a picture of it. They used a flash. We (else _I_ ) panicked. What if that flash alerted residents? But the image it captured! And the excitement it drew! Lex couldn't say if the girl _responded_ , yet, I noted the journalist's eyes and the curl of the lip as if I caught their face mid‑scream.

As the _Crew_ reveled at the fracas, my gut insisted I withdraw. It was I who kept a watch. I switched my attention from above to below. That street we invaded felt darker then darker; a waft of fog settled onto its track. Only a single, distant lamp far at the center of the street fought through that miasma. My eyes swept side‑to‑side to warn of interlopers. _The walker?_ _The police?_ The situation felt too chaotic to be tenable; our thrill was liable to trap us. For a while I heard the flow of traffic, the trickle of cars, cars ‑ one by one ‑ echoed at the distance as the neighborhood yawned into silence.

 _Wait!_ Lex shouted.

 _The Girl in The Window_ vanished.

At the curb, then, we gathered to assess how to proceed. Giddy by the shock of it, by the power of it, the zone was too hot to quit. We hadn't encountered a shape that perfect since our attempt at the Dominguezes' mines. We hadn't encountered a shape that reacted and interacted like the girl ... _ever_.

We talked, _crazed_ 'til out of the bolt I said: _Scramble!_

My attention hadn't drifted away from the flow of traffic. I noted that a vehicle sped _closer_ not _farther_ to the street's north end. As its headlights betrayed its intents, we scattered. The site was desolate; there were no vehicles, no dumpsters, little of anything, anywhere to mask our encroachment. Across the warehouse, though, the alleys parting the buildings offered their cover so we rushed into the nearest, widest passage available.

The alley funneled into stairs that took us onto a level just under the street's view. The passage ambled past that further and deeper 'til it stopped at a yard. Seeking what I thought to be a better shot at cover, I eked away from the _Crew_ and the stairs, to continue through the passage. The alley was tight; the buildings at my sides, however, didn't obstruct my sight of the sky. My eyes split their interest, partly to the world below, partly to the world above, as I shifted forward to the yard.

I noted a brilliant paradox of color that engulfed my stroll ‑ from the onyx at my sides to the sky overhead. It wasn't a midnight sky or a shade of twilight. Yet it wasn't midday either. Maybe it was a blur? ‑ admixtures of extremes? Maybe it was my perception distorted by exhilaration?

My exploration stopped at a tall, narrow gate. _Locked_ , it checked any advance into that yard. I stood, gripping the bars, peeling the chains as I tried and failed to pry the gate. Just an arm's length away the yard's overgrowth called even as it disturbed. The gloom of its trees appeared so gray to my eyes that it felt unreal.

The _Crew_ hesitated and rejected the yard; they plead for my return so I retreated to settle by the stairs. We planked the steps, keeping our feet at the bottom and our chins over our hands at the top. We kept just under the street's sight; our sights aimed to that crest where the street itself spread like a boundary. Cast by the shades of the buildings that entrapped us, we kept _still_ to evade detection.

The vehicle entered the street and approached the warehouse ‑ driving north to south. It idled at the center. We didn't hear anybody get off or on. We didn't see the spotlights probe the curbs. We waited and watched, raising and lowering ourselves to pry that horizon at the crest of the stairs. My eyes kept darting to the sky. Framed by onyx, the sky attained a mystic shade of blue and blossomed into a burst of stars, a smatter of cosmos.

 _Then_ ‑ the vehicle fled.

For a spell we stayed by the stairs ‑ 'til a breeze stiffened through the alley ‑ 'til a ruffle of trees against trees creaked out of the yard. A dog barked at the distance. That neighborhood's slumber ‑ undisturbed as it were ‑ compelled us to resume the adventure.

We reconnected in front of the warehouse and pondered what to do.

Lex passed the photograph of the window & the girl. The flash had reflected off of the glass so that ghost became a blob. As I feared, it wasn't an image suitable for our channel. I lamented that we didn't take the thermal.

_Who's game to enter?_

The crime had been at the tip of the tongue. Nobody wanted to air it _explicitly_. At the onset we suspected that the _Lux Haus Autos_ warehouse had been converted into a tenancy ‑ therefore ‑ a breach of its interior had been rejected. As it was a _business_ not a _residence_ , the calculus _changed_. Emboldened, it didn't feel like intrusion anymore. That we weren't disturbing anyone's _domicile_ altered the nature of it enough to be palpable.

I itched at the chance to sneak into that warehouse. Our resident ‑ _ists_ were eager to enter. Only Lex wanted to leave ‑ we coaxed them to stay and they volunteered to be our eyes and ears outside the warehouse.

The front had been too guarded to admit entry. Rather, we shifted onto the side and ambled through a passage like a driveway. Jason & Paul (and _I_ ) led while Lex trailed. We aimed for the rear. Around us the alley plunged into an abyssal shade of onyx that blotted its architecture. All _details_ , windows, doors, everything that to daylight would have been, could have been exposed melted into inky voids. Ahead, expanding and evolving step‑by‑step, sprouted an uncanny yonder.

We should have fled.

Was it aware of us?

Were we aware of it?

The alley terminated; we stood confounded at a segment of pavement betwixt the dark behind us and the light before us. Our vista exploded and we caught a perfect view of the sky that fragments only teased. Across the space & time of a ghastly azure the stars twinkled as if they were jewels encrusted onto velvet. Ambling from the zenith to realms deeper and deeper below, we noted how the encroachment of man degraded the purity of heaven. 'Til we gazed ‑ and gasped ‑ at the base, the lot framed by grinding, decaying tenements.

The lot had been paved like a street. At that midnight it yawned a vista desolate almost abandoned as it flaunted scars carved by use. It rolled forward, toward a railroad that spurred into warehouses. It widened like a grin, spreading side‑to‑side 'til at its extremes it tapered onto intersections. Every so often we caught glimpses of cars driving _by_ not _into_ the lot. Otherwise ‑ nothing ‑ nothing ....

Why did it upset me?

We weren't drunk. Yet stepping into that lot, everything felt disjointed, everything. All of it ‑ and the sum of its parts ‑ upset the mind. That strange sky. That strange city. The neighborhood's character. The inconsistent and awkward dimensions (the lot was wider than the street). The shapes of buildings (tenements in front of us) assumed a hostile character in spite of their familiarity.

Had we ventured into a world so removed, _so alien_ that it followed altogether alternate realities?

We stopped to contemplate the absurdity of the situation only to realize it wasn't simply a quirk of that landscape. It was the air ‑ its drone, its chill, its odor that bespoke of ages earlier than ours. It was the land. It was the sky. _Midnight!_ The cityscape that entrapped us transmitted its unwelcome. We didn't belong there and it wasn't because of that which we intended to do. Our strangeness was far too fundamental.

Where is the past? ‑ the future? Don't they exist as physical as everything? But isn't reality hysteria shared _or_ imposed by the globe's self‑awareness? And if so, if so ‑ perhaps ‑ were it not possible howsoever unlikely to slip into realms thus askew of the present?

At the rear of the warehouse we found Dutch‑style doors framed by thin, long panels. We wondered, as we hesitated, _do we, do we_? Lex faced the tenements ahead. Jason  & Paul scanned the lot side‑to‑side. For a while I stopped ‑ then ‑ I formed a mitt from a scarf to match my fist and I aimed my punch through the glass. No alarm buzzed. No stir replied. Not a whiff of commotion followed my break save that timbre of tiny little bits of screes scattered at the floor.

I reached into the maw careful to mind the teeth. I fumbled for the door's locks ‑ its top‑half yielded but its bottom‑half defied my efforts. To free the entire door I would have had to shatter yet another panel and I wasn't so bent. Still ‑ we weren't alerted to a reaction of any stripe. Lights hadn't flickered at the tenements. Cars hadn't stopped at the intersections. Even the air hadn't whispered its warnings to us.

Lex paced the lot, facing the tracks, the far, distant roads where they entangled into the neighborhood. They gazed to us every so often; their eyes reflected my trepidation. I forgot what I said to the journalist except to warn them off of the tracks and its spurs.

Jason & Paul mounted the hurdle I left of the door.

I followed, awkwardly, rusty as it were.

Past it, we crammed into the warehouse. A fog of pitch cloaked its realm. We kept it so as a caution. We suppressed flashlights and ignored switches as electronics impeded the work. That cellar wasn't a maze and to traverse it didn't compel us to be cartographers.

Our entry led us into a chamber devoted to furnaces and breakers. Foyers stocked by coal split it away from a vast, gothic kitchen that merged to a cafeteria. At its rear that area converged onto a corridor. We trampled as it twisted us this way and that way 'til direction itself melted into the ether. We stopped every so often to gawk at its walls ‑ its walls supported thick and heavy doors ‑ beyond them they hinted at stairs (up, down), at passages (in or out), at vaults, else, at rooms reserved for the employed.

Forward.

Onward.

Ahead, the corridor stopped ‑ _abruptly_ ‑ at the threshold of the office. We staggered past that doorway, eager if not giddy to be washed by light. The office _blazed_ to light whose source could not be detected. Its windows were frosty. Its views were distorted. Midnight bled through them but it wasn't enough, _it wasn't enough_ to account for that light.

My impression of the office was colored by what I mistook to be its size. Except that as I entered its volume my steady, calm eye flattened its dimensions into something, something _ordinary_. Its floor, tiled back  & white, supported a matrix of desks arranged three‑by‑three. Its vault, accented red by‑the‑by, formed or emerged out of networks of pipes that had not been beset by the modesty of cover. Its walls sparkled amber, a deep yet vivid swipe of yellow.

Jason & Paul gasped, surprised. I asked why and they pointed at the desks. _Electronics?_ The technology we detected amounted to: bulky telephones, bulky typewriters, bulky copiers. Had the proprietors opted for analog over digital? Had the _Lux Haus Autos_ warehouse taken hipster mystique too, too far?

We spread and combed, careful not to leave prints.

I approached a bulletin and examined everything that had been pinned onto it. I chuckled as my eyes drew to newsprint. Of course. Everything made sense. Didn't it? _Didn't it?_ Of course _that_ would have to be there to complete the warehouse's trick of time  & space.

It was a copy of that essay Lex fished out of microfilm. The article dated to 1967. Under that light, its type was illegible, though, its picture was superb. I recognized it, _immediately_. It was that, that '30s photograph. Amazingly, it hadn't aged, if it were true, it hadn't aged in spite of decade after decade. The imagery's power ‑ focused and sharpened ‑ struck so raw a chord I wasn't prepared. Details of that tarp and what it covered tantalized my understanding. Multiple outlines of shapes ‑ the smallest at the front, the largest at the back ‑ spurred a shiver that cascaded my spine.

I shrieked at Lex's signal ‑ they squawked into my mobile.

 _It's getting weird_ , they said of the outside ‑ they had forced a route from the back to the front of the warehouse via the lot.

At the curb, the reporter heard and saw trash quiver.

 _Trash? At the curb, Lex?_ I asked.

Jason & Paul grimaced ‑ they didn't appear upset.

I replied: _Just stay frosty, Lex_!

They insisted that we flee.

Snickers tweaked out of the twins ‑ and I wondered if it weren't part of a rouse.

Our mobiles de‑linked.

Didn't we want to run? The site was hot, hot.... Too hot to leave.

We continued and located stairs to the 1irst floor.

Gazing at that flight, weren't we struck by how hostile the shape of it appeared to be? Light, dammed at its crest, oozed step‑by‑step to its root where swirls of colors wet our boots. Didn't we want to believe it was midnight, _midnight_ flooding those stairs? We climbed, hammering foot over foot, breaking and shattering pools of lights collecting at its steps. We climbed and the whole, entire warehouse felt as if it were aware of us.

Upstairs, the layout disoriented us. We were not prepared for its enormity. Its _inner_ capacity exceeded its _outer_ dimension. We couldn't fathom if the optics were by design or by innovation. 'Til we noticed a feature that confusion rendered imperceptible. From outside we judged the warehouse stacked three floors over its cellar. From inside we realized its 1irst  & 2econd floors had been merged into a single level approximately thirty feet tall. Its 3hird floor, if it existed, ought to be directly overhead.

We scrambled to find access for what may or may not have been left of that 3hird floor. We spread from area to area, sprinting past corners and nooks, fanning into aisles. The warehouse had been crated to its limit and that congestion frustrated our progress.

Attention to detail revealed a subtle yet distinct anomaly. It was a cable that dangled at a vault toward the warehouse's rear, left corner. That cable latched onto a rectangle four tiles wide by nine tiles long. That rectangle wasn't flat against the ceiling. Rather, it jutted by an inch so or so. Its borders were choked by dust spread by air. Its tiles were painted a shade that almost, _almost_ matched the ceiling.

We wondered if the rectangle were freed by yanking the cable.

I piled crates into a heap that permitted my climbing and reaching the cable's end. Thus grasping and wrapping it to my palm, I applied my weight and it drooped a little, a little 'til it stuck. I posited that a mechanism other than that cable controlled the access. Jason & Paul insisted that the rectangle and the ceiling separated. So I tugged even as I feared the snap of the cable would have been the end of everything.

The cable _slacked_ and we ran.

The rectangle _yawned_ ‑ its far‑end pivoted as its near‑end twisted and rocked. It tumbled away, _away_ like a leaf parts a tree 'til it wrecked into crates. It left a void that resembled a maw ‑ with teeth at its edges ‑ with a tongue, _no_ , a ladder slipping, stopping, slipping as it projected to the floor.

Silence muzzled the warehouse except where it broke to our laughter. We, standing at the foot, gawking at the head, examined the ladder to gauge its sturdiness. As we grasped its fame we startled. A vibration heretofore imperceptible transmitted from the ladder to the warehouse. Our bodies rumbled; in spite of its erstwhile real, physical intrusion, buoyed by levity, we dismissed it as more imagination, less reality.

Paul _not_ Jason itched to be first ‑ the younger's commentary prepared the elder's.

My thoughts returned to Lex and their whereabouts.

I turned to the window that faced the street. _Trucks_ parked at the curb. The street wasn't empty? But we hadn't felt their arrival. And, certainly, _certainly_ , we hadn't loitered that warehouse unchecked for hours upon hours.

It was my turn to ascend.

Thirty feet should not have felt so high. I climbed, rather, I forced my feet to scale that ladder rung by rung. I didn't want to face _anywhere_. Was it its shake or my shake? As with everything that midnight, it wasn't a particular element this or that way but the totality of its alchemy that inspired dread. I didn't want to face _anything_. My eyes tracked the twins ahead ‑ they encouraged my advance. Why didn't I retreat? Too late ‑ wasn't it just _too late_? ‑ and as I passed that last, meddlesome rung and as I jumped into a labyrinth, I fathomed the ordeal it would be to reverse course.

The 3hird exceeded the cellar's gothics and the merged 1irst's & 2econd's proportions. Excitement propelled us as we traversed a maze too vast to be yoked by that warehouse's perimeter. It wasn't a conundrum. Or, so we supposed. It wasn't intent to mislead but to point if not command our attention to _its_ goal.

As such, if such it were, we rambled onto the center of the labyrinth. It had to be the atria. Corridors rayed out of it. Corridors from where _or_ to where? We stepped into its midst ‑ far enough to see that the atria had been forged by the union of a domed vault and a columned ring. We approached its only article ‑ a seat like a throne ‑ a skeleton of wood endowed a physique of metal.

We froze, afraid of it, of what its figure, its symbology implied. It was eerie yet visceral what that object ‑ and its physical _emanation of fear_ ‑ awoke at the core of our biology. Wasn't there a sense ‑ a sense neglected 'til withered and rotted ‑ a sense suppressed by the conscious ‑ ignored except if invoked _mystically_? Wasn't there something, _anything_ ‑ to save us ‑ that across the abyss of time  & space meekly insisted _we crossed thresholds unsecured for man_.

A swastika had been carved into the crest of the chair. _A swastika of crescents bordered by circles._ It had been too, too carefully etched to be a mistake. _That_ was the emblem of the _Thules_ later the _NAZI_. The _Thules_ or their sympathizers claimed that volume ‑ that whole, entire warehouse had been their handiwork.

Layers of dusty, ashy debris caked surfaces throughout the atria. Everything had been kissed by fire. It got to our hands then to our eyes. We itched and labored to breathe.

We tread past the chair ‑ as it shed the worst of it ‑ toward a kink where that vault focused into a passage. Right at the brink of the passage, at its threshold, we tripped and shrieked. After a spell to collect our wits, we stopped and examined that floor. The atria we tried to escape served as a nexus for networks of cables. We couldn't say where they originated only that they radiated from the circumference to the center of the vault (behind the chair). There where they met, they braided ‑ and continued into that exit we stood by.

The sight of them ‑ so imperfect, _so organic_ ‑ they resembled vessels. Vessels that transported current not blood. They throbbed and their resonance impelled surfaces to fuzz. _Alive?_ If alive they were.... Couldn't they be? Weren't they simply arteries and veins of an immense organism?

The network's cables varied ‑ varied by type and varied by age. It wasn't a _singular_ but a _plural_ effort that spanned decades. Perhaps it had been laid by those who investigated _The Girl in The Window_. Or by those who hexed the realm into the state we found it.

As if to defy the architecture's _evil_ , we grasped and yanked at a wire. Just to hold it, it felt as if its vibration could have ripped my flesh to shreds. I tugged ‑ and Jason & Paul assisted ‑ 'til we heard a snap. It came from the atria ‑ from the chair. Alerted, thus, we caught sight of a spark. A spark ‑ a burst of light against dark, arcing from the nexus to the ground, splitting by twos, by fours, by eighths, splitting more and more dimming into the void where it vanished.

My mobile _shook_.

It was Lex: _Why'd you cut that cable?_

_Lex? Is that you? What's .... What's wrong?_

I struggled to recognize the voice through that crazed accent. The very, _very_ start was lost to the ether. The bulk was saved into my recorder and transcribed as:

"Transmi ... we don't have ... battery's past pri ... won't ... a charge ... can't ... re ... I found you by accident! Listen to me, what we saw, _The Girl in The Window_ , _it's not Vilma Carolina_. Stevenson spilt the details to me. Father wasn't French. Mother wasn't Ame .... They killed Lementine and switched her with a lady already impregnated by the _Thules_. Conception ... was timed to a _ritual_. _Vilma Carolina_ was supposed to be the last of a sequence of _star‑children_   ‑ a chain ‑ a lineage ‑ crusaders brought it into Europe from a tribe of heretic Babylonian Arabs. That sequence brought their cult toward its goal ‑ star‑children whose bodies would be compatible ... _shaped_ for a _specific_ entity. Remember Lee's pre/post inflation genesis conjecture? _Vilma Carolina's_ baby was supposed to be the vessel for an entity of that epoch. The _Thules_ instigated their channeling into her fetus the night of her death. It spurred changes ... _and she felt it_. Stevenson told me that 3hird floor was converted into an asylum to keep her isolated for the birth. But that creature metastasized ‑ it beca ... listen to me ... the _consciousness_ of that entity ... it didn't leave the warehouse _completely_. ... brations kept it sated ... it alters time and space. The _Thules_ were about to impregnate somebody who would have been Vilma's cousin when ... war stated earlier ... they expected. Stevenson expanded the mechanism to bottle it ... you ... you listen to me ... you're breaking alre ... Jason 'n' Paul are ... are gone ... still a chance ... if you get away _right now_."

Static crackled.

I stood agape: was it Lex?

Jason & Paul continued into the exit ahead. I followed the twins right 'til its end. Our trek stopped in front of a door ‑ a door whose frayed, azure frame stood encrusted and sealed by salt. A sign had been attached scarcely disturbed to the doorknob ‑ its front read _Amy, LEAVE_ ‑ its back sprawled empty. Slats, above and below that doorknob, formed weak analogs of windows. We tried our flashlights. We tried our mobiles. We tried and failed to detect what, _what if anything_ , waited beyond that door.

If not for that which we suspected, we could have ‑ _certainly_ ‑ we would have ignored the door and fled the warehouse. We stopped to argue. We traced and mapped onto the ash of the floor our steps throughout that 3hird floor. Hadn't we accomplished so much and damaged so much to retreat? Wasn't that doorway yet another drop into the ocean? Especially as we felt it had to be the entrance into the _girl's room_.

We assaulted the door. It resisted 'til our violence cracked its seal. Then our strike wreaked havoc. Then ‑ it trembled ‑ _it trembled_. We shrieked at its reaction. Its slats loosened, dropped. Its gaps weren't wide enough to let us reach through. We kicked and, _and_ it caved. It caved into the chamber beyond the threshold and shattered at that spot where it hit the floor.

 _Vilma Carolina_ ‑ it was her room ‑ it was her _asylum_ , if Lex (if Lex it was) was believed.

Alarmed by a surge of air that past as if through our bodies, we turned and scanned the area. Where was the passage? Where was the atria? The architecture lost its vastness as the realm settled into silence. Where did it go, _the magic_?

Under the threshold we struggled to accept what became of reality.

It was the very top, right of the warehouse. It was the girl's room. Pitched and so much so that flashlights did not penetrate that chamber. Jason & Paul rushed into it. I wouldn't. _I couldn't._ Frozen to where I stood, I hesitated.

The twins had vanished into that jet at a point only feet in front of my eyes. I heard them. Or was it that I felt them? Their boots pounded at floorboards. I couldn't see therefore I couldn't find them. And then ‑ then the screaming.... I was engulfed by a whirlwind of voices like a train of conversations. As if a century's worth of dialog condensed into a bomb that burst at my ears. Its impression ‑ wasn't it a scream? ‑ _a howl_ ‑ declared its tumult in‑to perhaps out‑of existence?

It was a prank. Why ‑ yes, yes ‑ it _had to be_ a prank! A joke instigated by Lex and brought into fruition by the twins. A 4ourth conspirator was the walker. A 5ifth conspirator was the girl. It had to be a joke for our channel's benefit.

I teetered betwixt running for the ladder or for the chamber. I kept to the threshold and its salty, chalky frame, putting out of my mind the end of that 1967 article.

To call their bluff, I pointed my flashlight into the chamber without regard to whether or not it was spotted by neighbors. I didn't find Jason / Paul. I didn't find anything ... _anybody_. I felt as if only that chamber and I existed. So I wondered, if I went to the window, _if I went to the window_ , then, yelled ‑ why ‑ _that_ had to do it. They'd have to stop me. They'd have to stop me ‑ else ‑ we'd get caught.

 _Jokes over y'all_ ‑ I shouted, determined to end their tomfoolery.

My blood froze.

That tiny little girl's room didn't leave a spot to hide. Not a way in or out unless time itself were a doorway. For at the wall, at that spot where we saw the Girl, the Window _was bricked_!


End file.
